Diablo 5 Announced: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] What's going on everybody, Mortem here, this time bringing you the announcement of Diablo 5 as it happens, which occurred just yesterday from the time of this video, as part of the ongoing BlizzCon event.

[00:19] Now, I'll be completely honest with you, this announcement certainly caught me a little bit off guard. People who keep up with Blizzard a little more might have been less surprised about it, I guess, but nonetheless, I enjoy keeping up with Diablo, and so I decided to look into it and talk about this a little bit.

[00:35] But first things first, I gotta say, just as an initial reaction to all of this, I thought the whole thing was a little bit odd, both in tone, the way they announced it, and a variety of other things. And as I move to go through those things, I do also want to mention that due to the nature of this announcement,

[00:50] there really isn't anything to show you besides a 48-second teaser trailer that I don't want to loop 100 times. So I'm going to have some just generic Diablo footage in the background from some of the previous games.

[01:03] But again, the reason for that is because there is very little to actually show you as I move through this and talk about everything. But speaking of previous Diablo games, I suppose we should probably start with a little bit about Diablo 4 in particular, as both some of the things they said during the panel where they discussed details of Diablo 5, as well as the announcement in and of itself, I think gives us a pretty good idea of what to expect for Diablo 4, which is, I mean, maybe more seasons between now and the apparently spring of 2029 release date for Diablo 5, but really not much else.

[01:36] And the reason for this is because Diablo 5 takes place in a world where Diablo came back after the events of Diablo 4 and just won off screen. His plan was a success, he is in full control of Sanctuary, and you are meeting a very small resistance of the very few people that are left.

[01:54] And all of this occurs after the successful events of Diablo 4. So they did very specifically mention that after you defeated Mephisto as part of the events of the D4 stories and expansions, Sanctuary did actually enjoy a period of peace for a long time before that eventually came crashing down when Diablo himself returned, and the resistance that mounted to actually try to stop him just completely failed.

[02:19] Now, that's especially noteworthy for Diablo 4, because it doesn't really leave them a lot of wiggle room in order to, like, set up the next expansion. Because in order for that to have been a thing, they'd have to do some sort of timeline jump where, you know, the period of peace after you defeated Mephisto was ending.

[02:36] Which I think would be a hard thing to do narratively. And so, all of those details together, I do kind of feel like, story-wise, Diablo 4 is pretty much done. But again we probably almost certainly get some seasons and things so they can continue selling cosmetics and the like And speaking of we have no idea about any of that for Diablo 5 just yet because as I also mentioned just a moment ago Diablo 5 was announced very very early it seems

[03:01] The planned release date for it right now is spring of 2029. So assuming everything goes perfectly to plan, we got another two and a half years to wait, which is one of the many reasons this announcement was a bit strange,

[03:13] but I imagine it probably wanted to coincide with the 30-year anniversary for the franchise. But moving on a little bit, we know that Sanctuary has fallen, Diablo has won, so what about all of the other details we could possibly get into?

[03:26] Well, there are a few things to dig into, as the panel that followed the announcement did provide some details, as well as their website. For starters, as has happened a few times in the Diablo franchise, humanity is very close to being wiped off the map completely.

[03:40] There are very few survivors. You happen to be one of them. You are apparently going to be the heir to Westmarch, who has some sort of connection to Diablo. In particular, the people who did not submit to Diablo's rule, in some cases, got sent to his terror realm.

[03:56] For whatever reason, our character, the heir, winds up there, and it turns out that you manage to survive it somehow, but either as a result of this or perhaps because of it, you have some sort of connection with Diablo, who is apparently planned to be more of like a full-fledged character here, whereas he was more of a looming threat in a lot of the other games, which is interesting in and of itself, because I think there's a lot of ways that could potentially go wrong.

[04:19] Diablo as the Lord of Terror is really all about, you know, the sort of mystery of what he's going to be able to do to enhance some of that terror, and I think when you pull back the layers of that, it sort of demystifies

[04:31] it, and again, there's just a lot of ways for that to go wrong if it's not done extremely well. Either way, it seems our heir of Westmarch will be traveling with a caravan of survivors, including a band of

[04:43] misfits, and this is going to kind of take the place of the towns, which aren't really a thing that exists anymore, as most of Westmarch in particular has largely been turned into an outpost of hell where humans have been conscripted into the forces of hell, if not

[04:57] outright killed. Now, I will say an interesting thing they talked about in terms of the world of Diablo in this one is that because Diablo has won, he is using his powers and his newfound access to

[05:09] Sanctuary to actively reshape it, and they did mention that this is going to see a return to the procedural generation proper of zones. Which sounds good on paper, but again, we'll have to see the full scope of that

[05:21] and how it pans out in actual gameplay, because just as a bit of information, it could go either way. We also got some important details about the initial three confirmed classes,

[05:34] which are the Demon Hunter, the Monk, and the new Plague Knight. However I will say one of the really interesting things they said during the panel was that apparently their plans for Diablo 5 are for it to have more classes than all of the other Diablo games And they went on to specify that they don just mean more classes than those games had at launch but like period

[05:55] Which does make me very interested to see what their expected final class count for that is, especially if you want them to be varied and different from each other. But in either case, two of those announced classes, the Demon Hunter and the Monk, we have seen those previously,

[06:09] Previously, and I would say they have a very well-established class identity at this point, the martial power of the monk versus, of course, the demon hunter's precarious use of the demon's own powers.

[06:22] But the really interesting one there is really the plague knight. They describe this as a character who will be spreading diseases on the battlefield, only to then use abilities to consume those diseases to power themselves up,

[06:34] while at the same time being a heavily armored, sort of tankish-type character, And in many ways, outside of the aesthetic being a bit different, it does kind of remind me of something like the Paladin or the Crusader in terms of function.

[06:47] Anything beyond that, we will simply have to wait and see. But those are our confirmed classes, and then just based on how many classes they are wanting to apparently add to a launch version of this, I'm sure we could probably make a couple educated guesses, but I will spare you guys.

[07:01] Another thing they talked about during the panel is an early look at things like itemization. and while this was, again, very early due to where they were in the process of development, but they have some ideas in terms of itemization and how they want it to return to Diablo 2, more or less,

[07:17] and this includes checking up how the inventory works in particular. So, in the later entries, all items had a uniform size inside your player inventory, but it looks like they're moving back to that Diablo 2 situation

[07:30] where all of these items individually could occupy different amounts of space in your stash as a little bit of inventory Tetris, if you will. And they'll also be once again making gear sets an important part of the experience, if you will.

[07:45] That's something they wanted to hone in on. And then beyond that, just kind of pulling it back to the way Diablo II handled items in particular, which combined with the refocused approach to things like the procedural generation for the world,

[07:58] does kind of make me feel like that's what they're going for. But that's sort of all of the information that we know of for sure right now based on everything that they have actually said. I will take that a little bit farther and add my own thoughts to it by stating a few things.

[08:13] For starters, one of the things that keeps me from really diving fully into the Diablo franchise anymore are things like the season passes, the online nature of it, and all that stuff.

[08:26] And to be clear my hesitation with those things has certainly never been enough to stop Blizzard from doing what they do based on the money they rake in off of those things And so what I am very curious about personally is how they approach that with Diablo 5 And I think the answer is probably just that it going to be there because money

[08:44] But has nonetheless never been an area that Diablo has ever seemed to have gotten exactly right, let's say. Even if you ignore entirely people like myself who really just kind of want an offline mode.

[08:56] I also did want to point out a couple of things that I noticed about just some of the details there. For starters, they very specifically mentioned that you have a direct connection with Diablo, and you're going to see basically what the limits of your ability to use that connection to fight this evil in the land happen to be.

[09:15] The thing is, that's a plot point that comes up in the Diablo franchise a lot, and how it ends is badly for everybody, every single time. We saw that recently in Diablo 4, with main characters getting involved and having a connection with somebody like Mephisto, who then uses that connection to ultimately drive them insane before they get brutally, brutally murdered.

[09:38] And so I just fully have to say, if they suddenly decide to subvert that as an expectation to make the era of Westmarch here magically immune to that corruption in some way, I'd be a little disappointed.

[09:50] Like, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to them, you know, going for an angle on a story where you have this connection and the idea is to find a way to break that and not succumb to the inevitable corruption. Like, I think that would be okay.

[10:02] But the idea of that just being fine because you happen to be a special boy just doesn't really do it for me. given just everything about the way the series has set that kind of thing up to this point. And that comes with the added weight here as well,

[10:15] where they're apparently trying to make Diablo a full-fledged character, which, just combining those two things, there are just a lot of ways I think that could go wrong from a storytelling standpoint. And we'll see, I guess, if they happen to pull it off when the game itself releases.

[10:30] But it's a point of concern, I certainly have. And for right now, it says pretty much everything there is to know about the announcement of Diablo 5, including her own speculation on top of that. Otherwise, I guess it's something I'll keep my eye on for the next couple of years,

[10:44] as I don't imagine we'll be talking about this game in the immediate future, judging by the time frame. But I'll definitely be keeping up with it to see what happens with this one. And in the meantime, feel free to let me know how you feel about all of that down in the comment section below,

[10:57] which naturally means so I can comment subscribe on YouTube just. Very curious to see people's general reactions to this odd announcement, but regardless, truly, thank you so much for watching.

[11:09] I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom, and have an amazing day.

[11:30] you